(Above) The Dutch cover art for the VHS release of Ladyhawke (1985) – in honor of the late Rutger Hauer, one of my favorite actors growing up due largely to this film. Scanned from my personal collection of tapes.

A post in a VHS collectors group I belong to on Facebook – VHS Misfits – turned me on to the uncanny resemblance between Orion’s 1986 VHS release of David Cronenberg’s directorial debut They Came From Within and photographer Steve McCurry’s iconic “Afghan Girl” photo from the June 1985 issue of National Geographic.

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One of the amusing aspects of Wayne Kinsey’s book Hammer Films: The Bray Studio Years is reading how the studio struggled with cuts forced by snooty British censors who saw Hammer’s films as prurient trash…while at the same time shooting extra gore and naughty bits for the movies’ Asian releases.

That leniency for horror’s twin pillars of boobs and bloods can be found in the collection of Japanese VHS covers below. All the images come from Jayson Kennedy’s blog Basement of Ghoulish Decadence, which is full of all manner of fantastic VHS cover art from around the globe many of them from Kennedy’s own collection. He’s also a worthy Twitter follow for champions of the analog.

And if you missed Deep Fried Movies’ countdown of the 100 best vhs horror covers back in October, you can check it out here.

(Correction) I have been informed that the Hellraiser and Branscan covers are actually South Korean. So make that “38 classic Japanese VHS covers….and two from South Korea.”

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“I’ve made so many films and people still keep saying “The Horror Genre.” They never seem like horror films to me! Horror films are “Hammer Films” — vampires and Frankenstein. I love those pictures, but I don’t feel it’s exactly what I’m doing…” – Brian De Palma in a 1977 issue Cinefantastique

One of the arguments in the case against director (and noted Alfred Hitchcock fetishist) Brian De Palma is that De Palma is a cold formalist who places the style of his intricate set pieces above the human beings within them. Which is why it’s so surprising that De Palma’s 1976 version of Carrie is filled with significantly more empathy than the recent remake from director Kimberly Peirce, the humanist behind Boys Don’t Cry. (continue reading) Continue Reading ›

When it was released in 1984, A Nightmare on Elm Street rejuvenated the slasher film by putting the final pitchfork into the “mystery killer” formula of the original Friday the 13th. By the time the decade ended, A Nightmare on Elm Street killed the slasher film by transforming its monster into a wise cracking quipster and pushing the low-rent genre’s budgets increasingly higher with the necessity for elaborate effects sequences. Continue Reading ›